Upgrade a site collection to SharePoint 2013

Summary: Learn how site collection administrators can preview a copy of their sites in SharePoint 2013 mode, and then upgrade their sites.

After a server farm administrator has upgraded the databases, site collection administrators can upgrade individual site collections. When site collection administrators first browse to their sites after the database has been upgraded, a notification bar at the top of the site indicates that their sites can be upgraded. The choices are to Start now or Remind me later. Start now begins the site collection upgrade process.

To upgrade a site collection, site collection administrators complete the following steps:

This article discusses the second and third steps, and includes procedures for performing these tasks from Site Settings. For information about using Windows PowerShell cmdlets to upgrade sites from the command line, see Manage site collection upgrades to SharePoint 2013.

Upgrade step 2: Request evaluation site collection and Step 3: Upgrade the site

If you upgrade from SharePoint Server 2010 to SharePoint Server 2013, there are special considerations for My Sites. (My Sites are not available in SharePoint Foundation 2013.) Make sure that you upgrade the My Site Host site collection before you allow users to access their individual My Sites in SharePoint Server 2013. This makes sure that the server software and database changes are complete so that users can upgrade their individual My Sites successfully.
A user can upgrade his or her My Site by following the steps to upgrade a site collection later in this article, or a farm administrator can upgrade My Sites by using Windows PowerShell.

Note:

Because SharePoint 2013 runs as websites in Internet Information Services (IIS), administrators and users depend on the accessibility features that browsers provide. SharePoint 2013 supports the accessibility features of supported browsers. For more information, see the following resources:

As a site collection administrator, you can request a preview of your site collection; this is called an upgrade evaluation site collection. An upgrade evaluation site collection enables you to see your site’s content in a new, separate copy of the site that is running on the SharePoint 2013. Unlike visual upgrade in SharePoint Server 2010, the upgrade evaluation site collection is a complete copy of the site collection, separate from the original. Actions that you take in the upgrade evaluation do not affect the original site.

When you request an evaluation site collection, the request is added to a Timer job (named "Create Upgrade Evaluation Site Collections") which runs once a day. You will receive an e-mail message when the upgrade evaluation site is available. This might take up to 24 hours. The message includes a link to the evaluation site. Upgrade evaluation site collections are set to automatically expire (after 30 days by default). If yours expires before you have finished evaluating the changes, you can request another upgrade evaluation site collection.

To request an upgrade evaluation site collection

Verify that the user account that performs this procedure is a site collection administrator.

On the Site Settings page for the site collection, in the Site Collection Administration section, click Site collection upgrade.

On the Step up to SharePoint 2013 page, click Try a demo upgrade.

This option starts the process of generating an upgrade evaluation site collection.

You will receive an e-mail message when the upgrade evaluation is available. The e-mail message will contain a link to the site collection. Review the site and confirm that your site collection will look and behave as expected in the new user interface.

After you have reviewed the upgrade evaluation and made any necessary changes in your original site based on your evaluation, you can upgrade your site collection.

After you run the pre-upgrade checks and optionally review an upgrade evaluation site collection, you can upgrade your site collection to SharePoint 2013.

Important:

You cannot upgrade FAST Search Center sites to the 2013 experience. Existing FAST Search Center sites can continue to work in 2010 mode after upgrade. If you want the new functionality, you must create new enterprise Search Center sites in 2013 mode.

To enable users to preview Word or PowerPoint search results in a SharePoint 2013 Search Center, do each of the following:

Before you upgrade content site collections, upgrade the SharePoint Server 2010 enterprise Search Center site collection to 2013 mode.

Verify that the user account that performs this procedure is a site collection administrator.

On the Site Settings page for the site collection, in the Site Collection Administration section, click Site collection upgrade.

On the Site Collection Upgrade page, click Upgrade this Site Collection.

This option starts the process of upgrading your site collection. A box opens to verify that you want to start the process.

Click I’m ready to start the actual upgrade.

Note:

The site collection health checks are run automatically in repair mode before the upgrade starts. The results from the health checks are included in the upgrade log for the site collection. If there is an error, you must address it before you can continue to upgrade.

The upgrade starts, and the Upgrade status page for the site collection is displayed. This page automatically updates while the upgrade is in progress and displays information about the process, such as the following:

Errors or warnings

When the upgrade started

Where you can find the upgrade log file

After the upgrade is complete, the Upgrade status page is displayed in the new user interface with the message, Upgrade Completed Successfully.